The Believing Game (7 page)

The night Joshua actually stayed over, I felt almost like my old self. We'd decided on a Tuesday, since he ran a campus group then anyway. Besides, it's not like floor faculty would expect any weekend hijinks so early in the week. Addison told me not to worry about it. Sophie said, “But how is he getting in?”

“I dunno.” I slid her a look. “I'm not gonna worry about it.”

“Okay, then.” She held up a deck of cards. “Want to play Set?” We played two or three rounds before Sophie noticed me checking the clock. “Any idea when this shit goes down?”

“Nope.”

“It's like we're waiting for Santa.”

That made me laugh. “That's what I used to say every Christmas Eve. When I was a sweet little girl, I'd be hanging out in my feetie pajamas, looking up at the chimney, and I'd ask, ‘When does this shit go down?'”

“I bet you did.” Sophie grinned and then got serious. “Listen. Anything weird, anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, just yell.”

“Yeah?” It felt good to think that Sophie had my back on this.

But she said, “Yep. You just yell really loudly and then Jenn Sharpe will bust in to blog about it.”

“I feel loads better now.”

Sophie took my chin in her hand and made sure I was looking her in the eye. “Okay, for real now. Fuck curfew. I am going to be patrolling this hall like Ms. Ling on meth. I won't sleep all night. And if I hear so much as a whimper from you, I am going to start pounding — first on the door, then on him. You understand?”

I nodded. Sophie slipped across the hall to pace.

 

About forty-five minutes or so after lights-out, I heard a soft rap on my door. I might have missed it if I hadn't been listening so hard. And for a few seconds, I considered pretending I was asleep. But then I heard Addison's quick whisper. “Greer, Greer — it's late and we're here.” I opened the door. He ducked into the room and Joshua followed.

“You're such a cheese ball,” I chided.

“He loves to make a hymn out of your name.” Joshua stood with his hands clasped in the center of the room. I gritted my teeth. The little rhymes that Addison made with my name were just stupid little things, but they were ours — a joke between us. I didn't need Joshua to make them holy.

“Are you staying?” I tried to keep the hope from my voice.

“Nah, I just figured I'd check in on you.” Addison searched my face. “You okay?”

“Sure. No one saw you?”

“We're clear.”

“You guys must have superpowers.”

“People see what they're looking for.” Joshua sounded solemn, but he smiled warmly. “Elizabeth, give me a hug.
Are you all right with this? Truly? Addison felt you were ready for this step, but the last thing I'd want is to make you uncomfortable.”

I looked at Addison and then Joshua. “No, of course not. I'm happy you're here.”

“Good. I'm glad to hear you say that.”

“Me too.” Addison wrapped me in his arms and squeezed. “I better sneak out.” He kissed my neck, right below my ear. “You'll take good care of my lady?”

“Of course. She's your treasure.” Spending the night with Addison's spiritual adviser might be awkward, but at least I got to enjoy all the possessive pronouns flying around the room.

Addison put his finger to his lips, shushing us as he opened the door. He was there for a second, silhouetted in the doorway. I could just barely make out his smile in the low fluorescence of the hall lights.

And then the door shut. Joshua stepped closer to examine the reading lamps clipped on to my bed. “So the lights-out policy is just a saying.”

“Well, no. All the overhead lights go off at the same time. After a while, they let us have little ones, for reading.”

“You have to earn that?”

I nodded. “It's part of the patented McCracken privilege system.”

Joshua smiled again. He motioned to the bed. “May I?”

“Umm … yeah. Sure.”

“Do you feel like you've had a lot of privilege?”

It was apparently time to discuss my spoiled upbringing.

“My parents are sort of wealthy.”

“That wasn't my question.” His voice wasn't mean, just firm.

I thought of our stately brick house, standing at attention at the top of Hillside Lane. “Some people would say I grew up very privileged.”

Joshua still smiled, but his voice didn't waver either. “I didn't ask what some people would say. Would you call yourself privileged?”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

“I always had enough to eat. We have a nice house. With running water —”

“One second, please.” Joshua held up his index finger. “Did you just say you had running water?” I bit my lip. “That's what you can come up with when I ask if you've led a privileged life?”

“Well, some people don't. I never went to bed cold or hungry. I was educated. Not everyone on this planet can say that.”

“Well, all right, Saint Greer, I hear you. But tell me this, did you feel loved?” I felt my eyes roll. “Well?” I looked at Joshua and saw him watching me steadily.

“No. Not always?” It came out as a question.

“More often than not?” He asked it like the nurse at the doctor's office would, filling out a questionnaire.

And at first I went to answer yes. But that wasn't true. It felt like a scab coming loose, to look at someone and confide, “No. I don't think I've felt loved since I was little, really little.”

Joshua nodded. His smiled faded, but it didn't completely disappear. “Well, Elizabeth, then I'd say that you must have often gone to bed cold and hungry. Right?”

“You mean psychologically?”

“I mean, your heart also needs to be warm and well fed.” I nodded. That made sense. “Do you normally sleep with the light on?”

“Yes.” I would have lied even if I didn't. That light was going to stay on.

“Why?” After I shrugged, Joshua asked, “What are you afraid of?”

“Tonight?”

Joshua chuckled. “How about any night?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you going to be able to lay down with me and rest?”

“You're not going to buy me dinner first or anything?” As soon as I cracked the joke, though, I wished I could take it back. Joshua noticed. He waited. “I'm sorry,” I told him. He kept waiting. “Sometimes I make fun of things because — well, because I'm not sure —”

“Most jokes come from a place of fear.” I sat down on the bed next to him. It didn't feel skeevy or anything like that. “Well then, Elizabeth. I've been here ten minutes. Look at how much we've already accomplished.”

“My therapeutic team should watch out. You'll put them out of business.” We sat for a minute. “That came from a place of humor.”

“Addison has told me how much you make him laugh. That was one of the first pieces of you he shared with me.” I knew Joshua was an expert on addiction. The health and well-being seminars I'd taken at McCracken were intramural sports compared to his junkie Olympics. Joshua could probably see the pleasure centers of my brain light up every time he passed along another detail about how Addison loved me.

“But he's talked like that about other girls, right? Like Heather?” Heather was the girlfriend who'd left for college and stopped calling after Thanksgiving. She'd broken things off with a status update. Addison had said he was too drunk to care. “I think that was her name, right?” I pretended that I hadn't googled her obsessively when I was supposed to be using library time to research the possible sentencing for theft and larceny convictions.

“Ah, Elizabeth.” Joshua said my name in such a kindly way I knew I was about to feel embarrassed. “You're too good for that.” A shiver of shame stiffened my shoulders. I braced against it and then threw myself down on the bed. Lay on my side and tried to avoid scooting all the way against the wall. I kept my eyes from sliding to see how Joshua settled down on the twin cot. Back home, I had a full bed all to myself. That might have been more conducive to trust exercises. When Joshua murmured, “Let me assure you that I don't forget those questions you avoid,” his breath brushed against my ear.

It felt like a test. “You asked me what I was afraid of.”

“That's right.” Aces.

“Nothing.” The room filled with heavy silence. It felt like I'd deliberately failed a test. Turned a quiz in blank or something. “I'm afraid of disappointing Addison.” The quiet stretched on. “I guess I'm afraid of losing him.” Still nothing. “Or something happening to him. An accident or even a relapse, you know?” Joshua still didn't answer, so I turned toward him. “Is that crazy?” Joshua just gazed at me, not like he was angry, just like he was waiting for something. “You think it is?” I heard panic edge under my voice.

Joshua spoke slowly, calmly. “It's a little crazy that we're still talking about Addison.” It was my turn to wait in silence.
I kept my eyes steady. Joshua asked me, “What would happen if Addison disappeared next week?” I refused to blink. He made it more real. “What if his parents decided to send him away, to get him farther away from Chuckie? What would you fear then?”

“That I'd never see him again.”

Joshua shook his head. “Don't me make wipe that boy off the face of the earth. Neither of us wants to imagine that.” I bit my lip. Joshua asked, “What are you most afraid of?”

“That I'm unlovable.” I blurted it out without thinking, but it sounded right. And Joshua nodded so I knew it sounded right to him too.

“Think back to the time in your life when you were most afraid. Were you unlovable?” I heard my heart tick between us like a metronome. Steady. Steady. I never talked about Parker and the gun. No one told me to keep quiet about it. At least no one said it outright. It was more like an unspoken understanding. The next year we all went out for dinner on Thanksgiving and since then that became the tradition. I'd hear my mother gaily laughing about her inability to wrestle a twenty-pound bird into the oven. It took a while before I even connected the two, considered that maybe my parents had been afraid — truly afraid — also.

“No.” Back then I was eminently lovable — the youngest cousin. Perched on my uncle Brady's lap and singing a song I'd learned at school when Parker raised the gun up, quivering. When he pointed it at his father, the muzzle was directed at me too.

“So, who were you then?”

“I was the littlest. Because of that, Parker and I would get to snap the wishbone.”

“Explain that for me.”

“You know — the wishbone? When the turkey's done, you dry out the wishbone. Then you tug on it and whoever gets the bigger piece wins.”

“Wins what?”

“Your wish. It's just a kids' game. Usually the two youngest get the honors. In my family, it was me and Parker.”

“Parker is how much older than you?”

“Two years.”

I remember when Parker raised the gun in his hand. I thought it was a toy. I figured he was about to get in trouble for bringing a toy to the dinner table and then his mom shrieked, “Parker!” She must have said, “Parker — my God!” Or something like that because everything got very serious all of a sudden. And then she said, “He has a gun, Brady,” really urgently. But that was unnecessary. Because Uncle Brady knew that. The gun, after all, was pointing at him. Us.

“So you and your cousin did the wishbone tradition — what did you wish for?”

“We didn't. Not that year.” Ordinarily we'd play a superstitious game with a bird carcass, but that night Parker went straight for the gunplay. I giggled, a quick blurt that seemed even louder in the hushed room.

“Why are you laughing? Is that a joke?” Joshua's stern look was back in place.

“I'm sorry.” It wasn't my real laugh. It meant,
This sounds bad, but it ended up being okay — no worries, right?
Or
I know — my family is certifiable.
“I get nervous when I talk about it,” I explained.

“What's making you nervous?”

“It's not really something we talk about.”

“Where is Parker now?”

“I don't know. He was in a residential program for years and then came home for a few months after he turned sixteen. He was on parole or something, I think, because at first he couldn't leave the state, but then he moved out. He lives on his own. In Colorado, I think.”

Parker liked to ski. I hoped he was out in Colorado. Working as an instructor or something. Maybe Joshua read my thoughts, because he asked, “You're not afraid of Parker.”

“Not anymore.” I thought hard about that. “I don't think I was ever afraid of Parker. It was more …” I shrugged my shoulders and felt Joshua's hand settle on my neck.

“Go on.”

I tried not to bristle and to find the right words for it.

“He had this really desperate look when he raised the gun.” I remembered it as wild. Like someone had called, “Ready or not!” in hide-and-go-seek and Parker hadn't yet found a spot.

“Who got the gun away from him?”

“My dad.”

“Wow.” Joshua looked impressed. “Really? That surprises me.”

He didn't even know my father. “Why would that surprise you?” And then, “You haven't even met my father.”

But Joshua only shrugged. “It just doesn't fit with what you've told me about your father.”

“I never told you anything about my dad.”

“I got the impression of a very nice, hapless guy.” Joshua paused. “Not a hero.” It didn't seem particularly heroic. My mother actually did more that day. She stepped away from the table, casually retrieving the second crock of mashed potatoes — something like that. She called 911, passed along our info, and then returned to the table with the dish. No biggie.